


Metropolitan

by skcm



Series: Waste [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pre-Relationship, maccready defends comics as the last bastion of human expression, minor quest spoilers, minor spoilers for the quest 'confidence man', post-confidence man quest, tex and co. wax on about the death or the life of art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 00:23:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5353895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skcm/pseuds/skcm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s a little creaky at first but only from holding back his thoughts, but Travis pipes up before MacCready and his wide-eyed, reminiscing boss can keep at it. “If we forget what was good about the past, we forget why we should try in the present at all, and we forget to have hope for the future. Something’s gotta come out of this wasteland someday.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metropolitan

The trailer from which Diamond City Radio broadcasts across the Commonwealth is lit up by pre-war lamps, here and there, all frayed wires bursting from where they shouldn’t like they’d fit better growing off the head of a mad scientist in a cautionary propaganda reel.

Tex sits cross-legged on the edge of the bed that’s seen very little rest since its owner resigned himself to all night, every night vigilance after he made the mistake of growing a spine, so he sits in the desk chair nearby and buckles under the weight of a backbone, trying to remain hopeful.

MacCready is sprawled out on the floor, five minutes into not giving a fuck about this guy anymore, waiting for Tex to stop rambling.

“I mean, like, you ever see a museum out here? In New York, we had a lot of ‘em, all stairs and walls, a masterpiece every inch or so. The Met was the big one-- the big time, with all this shit so old you’d swear it wasn’t even real.”

“What about Pickman?” MacCready rolls his eyes, but they’re cast at the laces on his boot, and neither Tex nor Travis catch a glimpse of his little sneer.

“Pickman was sick, Mac. It’s not the same.”

“That’s because the _Commonwealth_ isn’t the same as your big time old world city.”

“Pickman fucking killed people, and his art wasn’t even that good. Like, amateur stuff. Not the-- not the creepy murders, but the art itself. I mean, it wouldn’t even hang in _Queens_.”

“You’re talking to someone with no frame of reference here, boss.”

“You’d have one if you ever goddamn listened to me.”

Travis interrupts their bickering. “Clara, what was your favorite kind of art before the war? Bombs drop; things burn, but you didn’t. Hit me with the brightest memory you got.”

“Yeah, okay. I’m game for a little art lesson. You know tapestry?”

“Oh, not this crud again.” Mac looks at them like he’s got something real to lay out all of a sudden.

“Shut up, Mac. Travis is interested. I’m not gonna shut him out of this, alright? It’d do me some good to reminisce for once instead of cramming my fist into hostiles. There’s more to life than death and shit, anyway.”

She’s wrong.

“I don’t know a thing about tapestries.” Travis wheels his chair closer to Tex, scooting past MacCready to close a gap of centuries.

“See that thing on your jacket?”

Travis looks down at the letter B on his lapel. “Absolutely, I mean, I’ve got a couple eyes here. Why do you ask?”

“Embroidery, right? Imagine that sorta thing, but big, like whole walls of it. Top to bottom, everything unicorns and dragons and shit, like a bedsheet with some made up history stitched into every inch of it.” She’s like a damn nightlight all of a sudden, soft and glowing, and full of that uncanny joyous feeling people used to get once upon a time.

Her avid audience of one gives her the space to talk, but MacCready runs his mouth. “You’re full of sh-- it. Full of it.”

“Is it really that hard to believe?” She thumbs at a loose thread on Travis’ mattress.

“That’s not what I mean, boss. It’s like, you’re full of wanting something back that you can’t have. What’s the point, anymore? Just makes everyone else feel hopeless.”

“Do _you_ feel hopeless, Mac?”

“I feel like we’re all better off reading old copies of Grognak and looking forward. Or at least around us. Besides, Grognak _killed_ a couple dragons once.”

He’s a little creaky at first but only from holding back his thoughts, but Travis pipes up before MacCready and his wide-eyed, reminiscing boss can keep at it. “If we forget what was good about the past, we forget why we should try in the present at all, and we forget to have hope for the future. Something’s gotta come out of this wasteland someday.”

“Whatever, big boy. You keep your ideals; I’ve got a stack of comic books to get back to. We’re both escapists, right?” Mac slams the trailer door and stomps the whole way to the Dugout Inn, where he hopes he can find someone with a lick of freaking sense tonight, or at least get a few bottles of moonshine to keep him warm.

**Author's Note:**

> this one-shot scene will lead into a couple others, soon to come as i hammer them out! thank you all for reading, commending, kudoing, etc!


End file.
